


[ART] for Tell Me Something I Don't Know

by Mizzy



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Art, F/F, F/M, Inspired by "This Means War" (2012), Minor Josh Hoberman/Victoria Gradley, Minor Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker, Minor Marqueliot, Minor Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Minor William "Penny" Adiyodi/Julia Wicker, Minor William "Penny" Adiyodi/Kady Orloff-Diaz, Minor/Past William "Penny" Adiyodi/Alice Quinn, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26526571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy
Summary: Kady and Penny are Agents of the Library, partners and best friends - until they both end up dating Julia and their friendship turns to competition. But when Julia becomes the target of a dangerous magician, Kady and Penny have to use all their skills to protect her - and maybe deal with their feelings for each other in the process.[Art for an adaptation of "This Means War" for the 2020 Magicians Happy Ever After event]
Relationships: William "Penny" Adiyodi/Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker
Comments: 33
Kudos: 24
Collections: Magicians Happy Ever After





	1. Main Art

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Tell Me Something I Don't Know](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26512459) by [sultrybutdamaged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/pseuds/sultrybutdamaged). 



> So any regular visitors know you normally don't see much of my own art on my ao3 account. It tends to be something I mostly keep to myself as a fun stress-free activity. But I have such a soft spot in my heart for the MHEA event--the MHHE, as it was, last year really got me through some ish, and I was determined that if it happened again I would contribute--so I signed up to be a writer and was pleased af. Yeah, maybe I get to share something that helps someone else forget about reality for an hour or two, AWESOME. 
> 
> Except then, buoyed with the success of finishing my MHEA draft, I offhandedly offered to OfTheDirewolves five weeks ago that I could do pinch hit art if they needed someone. I resolutely meant it at the time, and completely forgot I'd offered it by the next day. 
> 
> For those new to the MHHE/MHEA Big Bang events, Tier 3s are the hard mode fics of the event; the kind of fics authors slap and go "look at how much awesome I can fit into _this_ bad boy" before crying into a starbucks cup bigger than their own heads. And it was three-and-a-half weeks ago that Maii came and asked if I was serious about about offering to do pinch hit art, and if I thought I could do a Tier 3 project in this time frame.
> 
> SURE, I said, I CAN TOTALLY DO THAT. It was a chaotic moment. I was filled with an utterly boggling amount of false confidence. 24 days. Cool. Coolcoolcool. I don't know where that amount of confidence suddenly came from. Adrenaline? Caffeine? Just sheer love for this wonderful event and all the hard work that's been put into it? 
> 
> I had a moment of sheer panic, and then a whole wave of false bravado, and then I got to meet SultryButDamaged and hear about the fic I would be illustrating, and my shrivelled little heart grew three sizes. Julia/Penny/Kady? Marqueliot? My fave boy James showing up to ruin things? Josh and Vi running a bakery called the Stonery? Penny and Alice with a kid?? And all of this in some well-paced, thrilling, interesting mystery with beautiful background characters and such an amazingly detailed romantic development for all of them? Honestly. It was like being dropped from height into a giant box of my favourite candy. And each piece was absolutely delicious. It's been a really fun three-and-a-bit weeks. And it's been interesting to try and accept what I could do within the time limit. I owe a bunch of thank yous because I have been a hot mess with a pencil and anxiety for the entire time.
> 
> Thank you to Loran, Rubickk, and Maii for talking me off major ledges during this past three weeks; thanks to Team Whitespire for my occasional (horrifying) exclamation marks!!!!! moments; thanks to Hoko and Lou for the encouragement and reassurement of the pure joy involved in this event; thanks to my boo Tig for being super supportive; thanks always to Stars, who for some reason believes in me non-stop; and thanks to SultryButDamaged for letting me join their wonderful project last minute, because it's been a real blast, and I really hope you all read the fic, it's a beautiful achievement of a novel.
> 
> Chapter 1 has the mandatory main 3 pieces of art, Chapter 2 has micro-illustrations, and Chapter 3 has some behind-the-scenes images and a couple of colouring pages that you can print off if you're into that :).
> 
> [Please read the fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26512459), it's AWESOME.

{ _Title image art for the fic._ }

[[Click for full size.](https://i.imgur.com/eIe6G4y.png)]

_{They were sitting on the raised roots of one of the Clock Trees, still looking down at the valley with the castle below.}_

[[Click for full size.](https://i.imgur.com/2FFePNQ.png)]

{ _“We wouldn’t want that.” Kady slid forward and cupped her jaw, pulling her in. The kiss was languorously slow, nothing like the performance from the other night. Kady’s fingers stroked her jaw and neck as they kissed, sending shivers all down Julia’s body. When they broke apart, her eyes were dark and heavy. “That work for you?”  
“Not bad,” Julia said. “For a grand romantic gesture.”}_

[[Click for full size.](https://i.imgur.com/JijgAiG.png)]


	2. Micro Illustrations

_{“You can’t keep me here,” Penny said as soon as the man stepped through the door. He folded his arms and tried to look more angry than freaked out. Frankie always said Penny underestimated how intimidating he could be, especially when you make your muscles go all bulgy.}_  


_{The Dean, a middle-aged man in a nice suit, was not noticeably impressed. He ignored her for the first few minutes she was there, more concerned with finishing his sandwich and flipping through the stack of papers on his desk before finally extracting a long form filled with tiny print and pushing it in her direction.}_  


_{“You finally showed up,” she said, then raised her eyebrows. “Damn. You clean up nice, James Bond.”}_   


_{And then a woman popped up next to him, all bright blue eyes and an incredibly wide smile. “Hi, there! You got away from me!” she said. She beamed up at James. Who put his arm around her shoulder and smiled back down at her and - oh. Of course. Because a run-in with her ex wasn’t enough.  
“You caught up,” James told the woman, beaming just as much down at her. “So, Fen. This is Julia.”}_   


_{“I told him I was seeing someone. And that I had to hurry because I was meeting them for breakfast. And then I - I ran.” Julia ripped a piece off her scone, then dropped it and reached for her cigarettes instead. “It suddenly occurred to me that he was going to ask who ‘someone’ was and I didn’t have a name. I didn’t have a gender! I had nothing!” She lit the cigarette and stared across the little table outside the Stonery. “What the fuck was I supposed to say?”_   


_{“Not even for me?” Margo leaned forward, elbows on her knees.}_   


_{_ _“While they were both staring - Zelda never apologized - she went on, “You are the best, as you say. Which is why your failure tonight is of such concern. We - myself, and the Director, who has taken an interest - we believe that Reynard is simply too dangerous to send Agents after. So we are pulling you from his case, and from now on only master magicians will be allowed to pursue him.”}_  


_{“He says the only thing scarier than my cooking is yours,” Quentin said, not sounding bothered by the insult. Probably because they all knew that Quentin’s cooking was fine, even if his repertoire was limited, while Julia’s was liable to kill someone._   


_{Half an hour later, Charlie was still grumbling as they left the auditorium. “I didn’t cheat,” she said, face screwed up with a seven-year old’s sense of injustice. “I’m not a cheater.” “I know, kiddo.” Penny ruffled her hair. “Some people are just dicks, okay? But don’t tell your mom I said that.”}_   


_{“Alice on a date?” Kady tossed the bowl of butter-and-cinnamon drenched popcorn on the table, then dropped onto the couch beside Penny and kicked her legs up. “I can’t see it.” Her hair was still wet from her shower, and she spread it out over the top of the couch so it wouldn’t soak through her T-shirt. Penny had caught her coming in from the Library, and the scent of the gyros he’d been carrying had been too much to resist, so they’d eaten first before she went to clean up.}_   


_{“The spell is, well, I don’t want to say simple.” Marina paused in her lecture. “After all, I wrote it. But it is deceptively elegant.” She tapped on the white board, where she’d written out a complex list of sigils, meta-math and diagrams. The whole room smelled of chemicals from her marker. “We enter the warehouse half an hour before the delivery. Three of us will take point; the rest of you are purely look outs and back up. If someone so much as throws a light spell in my direction, you’ll suffer. Understand?”}_   


_{Julia held out the dog, and Kady reluctantly took it in her arms, feeling irrationally like she was going to break it. The puppy gave a contented sigh and curled around itself, breathing softly as it closed its eyes. When Kady looked up again, Julia was watching her.}_   


_{“Bisexual disaster,” Quentin said promptly, then gave a little grin. “That’s not a bad thing.”  
“No, it isn’t,” Margo agreed, kicking him.}_   


_{“Yes! Daddy’s girlfriend said she’s a sloth!”  
Humbledrum laughed. “She is. Come on.” He stood back up and held a paw out to Charlie, whose hand practically disappeared in his fur when she took it.}_   


_{THE END}_   



	3. Behind-the-Scenes and Colouring Pages

I always love it when artists show some of their behind-the-scenes stuff for Big Bangs, so I thought I'd do that here. :D

When I offered off-hand to OnTheDirewolves that I would be happy to do some pinch hit art, I was super confident right up until a few minutes after I said yes. Whereupon I panicked, because it's been two years since I last really picked up a pencil lmao. So I ran screaming to my box of art supplies and didn't calm down until I'd done a sketch of Penny to make sure I remembered how this art thing worked. :D

And then it turned out that Penny was the easiest for me to draw probably lmao, so he was the wrong character to pick for that particular test. :D I will never, ever tire of looking at Arjun Gupta's face. Anyway, here's the pencil sketch of what became the title art. (To get to the final piece, I lightly painted it with watercolour pencils, then edited it in GIMP.)

**Colouring pages:**

And here's the two main pieces before they were coloured (in a mix of prismacolour and crayola colour pencils), so you can print them off and colour them in if that's what you're into. :D (You can colour the little ones but the download link sends you to a bigger version of the image.)

[[download here!](https://i.imgur.com/n6AvlDo.jpg)]

[[download here!](https://i.imgur.com/ZoA2yvR.png)]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tell Me Something I Don't Know](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26512459) by [sultrybutdamaged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/pseuds/sultrybutdamaged)




End file.
